AGENTS OF EMPIRE
Another look at The Lewis and Clark ExpeditionBy Robert J. Miller

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark sit high in the pantheon
of American folk heroes. Even today, at the 200-year commemoration of
their expedition, Lewis and Clark are viewed as brave adventurers who
went where no one had gone before and explored and conquered the Wilderness
for the betterment of America. There is another way, however, to view
Lewis and Clark, which is closer to the truth. Lewis and Clark were military
officers serving American empire — and Manifest Destiny — and were the
vanguard of American legal doctrines and policies that ultimately robbed
the indigenous peoples of just about everything they possessed. Historian
Bernard DeVoto stated that 'the dispatch of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition was an act of imperial policy.' This imperialism was
directed at the Indians and tribes that inhabited the Pacific Northwest
and the Louisiana Territory.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition was primarily concerned
with Indian affairs from its inception. In January 1803, when President
Jefferson sought an appropriation to fund the expedition, he told Congress
that the United States could capture from England the lucrative fur trade
with the Missouri River tribes and tribes clear to the Pacific Ocean.1 Then,
when launching the expedition in June 1803, President Jefferson instructed
Lewis to find the elusive Northwest Passage across the continent to use
the route, in cooperation with Indian tribes, to greatly expand the American
fur trade.2 Second, Jefferson wanted Lewis to establish commercial
ties with the Indian nations in the Louisiana Territory.3 Third,
Jefferson ordered Lewis and Clark to perform ethnographic studies of
Indians and to gather information concerning tribal life, religion, territory,
diplomatic relations and more.4 Finally, in January 1804,
after the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson added a new instruction and ordered
Lewis and Clark to extend the United States’ sovereignty over the tribes
in the newly purchased Louisiana Territory.5 Consequently,
Lewis and Clark were American economic and diplomatic representatives,
spreading the news of the United States’ new role as the controlling
government in the Territory after France sold the Louisiana Territory
to the United States.6 They also told tribes and foreigners
that Jefferson was now the 'Great White Father' of all the
Indian 'children' and that the United States was exercising
its sovereignty over the Territory.7

The Expedition, or 'Corps of Discovery,' operated
under a European legal principle called the Doctrine of Discovery. This
doctrine rationalized the domination and outright conquest of indigenous,
non-Christian, non-white populations because it provided that the first
European country that 'discovered' new territory gained an
interest in the natives’ property by becoming the sole entity eligible
to buy their lands and the sole government that could deal diplomatically
with the natives. Thus, indigenous peoples lost some of their real property
and sovereign governmental rights without their knowledge or their consent
to the 'discovering' nation. The doctrine recognized, however,
that natives retained occupancy and use property rights in their lands.

In 1823, in Johnson v. McIntosh,8 the
Supreme Court recognized that the Doctrine of Discovery was American
law. Much earlier, however, President Jefferson demonstrated his understanding
of discovery, and his agreement with the principle, when he wrote that
after buying the Louisiana Territory the U.S. had become its sovereign
but that the purchase had not diminished Indian occupancy rights because
the United States still had to buy the remaining property rights of the 'native
proprietors.'9 Jefferson also showed his understanding
of discovery when he sent Lewis and Clark beyond the Louisiana Territory
into the Pacific Northwest. Jefferson did so to strengthen the United
States’ discovery claim to the Oregon Territory before the English perfected
their own claim. Jefferson had American empire in mind for the Pacific
Northwest and for the Louisiana Territory, and he would not let the English
nor the Indian tribes stand in his way.

Lewis and Clark exercised American power and empire in
the Louisiana Territory and helped establish American discovery claims
to the Pacific Northwest. First, they distributed 'sovereignty tokens' consisting
of American flags, military uniforms and Jefferson Peace Medals to important
tribal chiefs. These 'gifts' conveyed significant messages
of American sovereignty and tribal allegiance to the U.S. Second, they
informed everyone that President Jefferson was now the 'Great White
Father' of his Indian 'children.' Third, they organized
visits of members of 26 tribes to Washington, D.C. to intimidate Indians
with the immense size and power of the United States. Fourth, they tried
to manipulate the political relationships of the tribes to facilitate
American goals regarding hegemony and trade. Fifth, they pursued American
commercial goals and consulted with tribes on the best locations for
trading posts to bring tribes within the American economic sphere. They
even promised to trade with tribes located outside the Louisiana Territory
which demonstrates further the 'imperial' reach of the Expedition
to areas that were then outside the United States. Finally, Lewis and
Clark performed recognized rituals to advance America’s discovery claims
by leaving rosters of their men and announcements of their presence at
the Pacific Ocean with the Clatsop and Chinook Indians, and by branding
and carving their names on trees.

The actions of Lewis and Clark show that, ultimately, the
subjugation of Indian property and commercial rights were the primary
objectives of the Expedition. The United States claimed its discovery
sovereignty over the Louisiana Territory and made concrete plans to begin
exercising that authority. The Expedition was part of Jefferson’s plan
to assimilate Indians and their assets into American society, to remove
the Indian tribes from America’s path to continental expansion, and to
exterminate Indians and tribes if necessary to advance American empire.

Thus, Lewis and Clark opened the road to the domination
of Indian tribes and to bringing them and their lands into the American
empire. Indians lost valuable property and governmental rights and were
ultimately subjected to official federal policies of forced removals,
assimilation, the reservation system, and the termination of tribal governmental
status.

6. 2 The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition 439
(Gary E. Moulton ed. 1986); id. volume 10 at 25 (Sgt. Patrick Gass recorded
that the Indians 'appeared well pleased with the change of government');
1 Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition at 165, 203-08.

7. Id.

8. 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823).

9. 1 Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents
422 (James D. Richardson, ed. 1897) (Jefferson wrote in a January 15,
1808 message to the Senate that Indians still held title to the Louisiana
Purchase lands and the U.S. had to buy it 'from the native proprietors');
1 Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition at 165 (Jefferson Letter
to Lewis, Jan. 22, 1804; 'Being now become sovereigns of the country,
without however any diminution of the Indian rights of occupancy…').

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert J. Miller, associate professor at Lewis & Clark
Law School, is chief justice of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand
Ronde Court of Appeals and a member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.